Pakistan
propaganda has sought to make the world believe that the happenings of
1947 in the Punjab were the result of what it calls ‘Some specific Plan’
on the part of Sikhs. -What this ‘Plan’ exactly was, what were the specific
objectives which it set out to achieve is not made exactly clear, but nevertheless
it is asserted that a Sikh ‘Plan’ existed to destroy Muslim life.
Barefaced lying has been known to go quite far in the affairs of the world
but such a high degree of it as has manifested itself in Pakistan propaganda
against Sikhs in particular and against India in general, is a rare treat
and is hard to beat. It must be a very stupid world which Pakistan
expected would swallow the stuff put forth by its propagandists.

The foregoing
chapters have revealed the Muslim political objective of the last decade
and a half-Pakistan, and the methods suggested and adopted for its achievement,
with their final culmination in the Direct Action Programme of the Muslim
League, and the mass-murders of Hindus (and Sikhs) witnessed in Noakhali,
the North-Western Frontier Province, the Punjab and Kashmir in pursuance
of this programme.

Political
activity in India since the time that, Mahatma Gandhi gave the lead to
the country, has followed ‘legitimate and non-violent methods’. At
times these methods involved lawbreaking, but never physical injury.
The country from 1921 onward had grown used to the method of Satyagraha
in its various forms-Non-co-operation, Civil disobedience and Mass Action
such as was contemplated for the 1942 movement, which never really could
be put into effect. But action of this kind was not the Muslim League
way. The Muslim League depended for its political success on the
assassin’s knife, the murderer’s bullet and the drafting into the field
of thousands of fire-raisers, murderers of helpless women and children,
brigands and desperadoes of all kinds. This ‘army’ was led by a group
of intelligent and coolly planning leaders on top, who deliberately instilled
religious hate for others into the minds of their co-religionists, whipped
up such hate into a violent frenzy, and then let loose these hate-inspired
mobs on such helpless Hindus and Sikhs, as were in a small minority in
particular areas, and so went under easily. This way the Muslim League
wanted to render it impossible for one unified Government to be established
in India, and to create a situation in which the political division of
the country became inevitable.

Let us
here refresh the memory of the reader, sum up such evidence of a well prepared
and slowly matured plan of religious war against Hindus and Sikhs as has
been recorded in the foregoing sections of this book in-more or less detail.
This evidence is summed up as under: -

(a)
The Muslim League rejected the Cabinet Mission Scheme, which offered to
the Muslims a wide measure of autonomy in such areas in which they were
in a majority. As a matter of fact, according to this Scheme, Hindu-Sikh
Punjab, Hindu Bengal, and all Assam would form part of the Muslim Zones.
The Muslim League however, would be appeased with nothing short of a totally
separate State.

(b)
To achieve this separate State, the League formulated its Direct Action
Programme; in support of which programme wild, threatening and violent
speeches were made clearly suggesting violence and destructiveness.
Murder hysteria was created in the Muslim mind. As a result of this
attitude attacks on Sikhs occurred at Abbottabad in July, 1946 and on Hindus
at Calcutta on and after August 16, 1946.

(c)
Then followed Noakhali and the rest. All such mass slaughter and destruction
occurred in areas in which Muslims were in an overwhelming majority, with
police and official aid.

In destruction,
arson and forcible conversions etc. right from 1946 up till 1948 the same
pattern was followed everywhere.

(d)
Muslim League leaders expressed no feeling of horror or even regreat at
what was being done to non-Muslims by their political adherents.

(f)
The recruitment, training equipment and organisation on a military pattern
of Muslim League National Guards points again to the existence of a Plan
in the hands of the Muslim League which was to be implemented through the
agency of the Goondas.

(g)
Last but not least is the fact that the Muslims in Bengal, North-Western
Frontier Province and the Punjab committed aggression which went unpunished
by non-Muslims for long. As a matter of fact, it was only in the
Punjab and that too, after August 15, 1947 that Sikhs and Hindus did anything
to avenge the murder of hundreds of thousands of their co-religionists,
the burning of thousands of houses and the abduction of women and children.
Up till August 15, Muslim aggression went unchecked, not because Hindus
and Sikhs did not smart under the blows of the Muslims but because in the
face of the Muslim organisation and police power they were helpless.
All along Muslims thought they could go on being aggressive forever, and
that there would be no reprisals. The Sikh reaction of the post-August
15 period really disillusioned and surprised the Muslims, who had never
carefully studied the Sikh character nor pondered the potentialities of
this people. The Sikh (and Hindu) revenge was violent, swift and
terribly destructive. Muslims of East Punjab had to pay for the misdeeds
of their co-religionists in West Punjab and other parts of India.
This was unfortunate and not very logical either, but in human affairs
it is not always logic which governs conduct, and the mass mind, once it
is roused to the pitch of fury, will grow terribly revengeful, unreasoning
and hysterical. That is what happened to Sikhs and Hindus in East
Punjab after the terrible sufferings undergone by Sikhs and Hindus at the
hands of Muslims in West Punjab and in the North-Western Frontier Province.
As lakhs of Sikhs moved east from Rawalpindi Division and the Frontier
Province, and uprooted men and women with ghastly stories to tell came
to seek shelter from the terror of Lahore and Amritsar which were burning,
the Sikh mind was deeply exercised over these happenings. Men, women
and children would be seen going into towns and villages, huddled fifty
in a room for shelter in Gurdwaras, Sarais, Dharamsalas-seeking lodgings
in places not fit to be treated as pigsties, setting up stalls and booths
on the roadside for a living-this sight was bound to make the Sikhs extremely
angry. Sikhs would be less than human, they would be a nation of
cowards and chicken-hearted manikins if they had not taken the sufferings
of Sikhs in other parts of India and of the Punjab much to heart.

It must
be reiterated as an important fact that while by April, 1947 there were
about a million Sikh and Hindu refugees from Muslim terror, who took Shelter
in Wah, Kala and other refugee camps, in Amritsar, in the Sikh States,
in Ludhiana, Jullundur and Ferozepore Districts, in Hardwar, Delhi, Ambala,
Karnal and even as far south as Gurgaon and the States of Alwar, Bharatpur,
Dholpur and Bikaner-there were very few Muslims till then and months later
who could be described as refugees. The reason was that Sikhs and
Hindus had been till then the only sufferers. They were nowhere in
a position to put up a fight against Muslim aggression. In Amritsar
alone some Muslims were rendered homeless in certain areas of the town,
where Sikhs and Hindus had been able to burn Muslim quarters after having
had their own burnt. Some Muslim workers were thrown out of work
because non-Muslim factory owners in these times could not trust their
life and property to Muslims, any one or any group of whom would most likely
turn an assassin and fire-raiser against Hindus and Sikhs. These
Muslims of Amritsar, a few thousands in number, were the only members of
their community in the Punjab who at this time could be described as being
riot sufferers as against a million Hindus and Sikhs. This situation
continued up till August 15, and several days later. Let the entire
Sikh-Muslim problem be pondered with this important factor in the situation
kept very carefully in mind.

But all
through the months up till August, 1947 Sikhs in every part of the present
East Punjab and in the Sikh States kept peaceful. The Government
communiques on the riot situation of the Punjab while reporting
as many as 69 fires daily in Lahore, the burning of whole localities with
many thousands rendered homeless, the brutalities committed by Muslim Goondas
and Assassins, have but one report to make about East Punjab: “East Punjab
is reported quiet.” Here and there minor disturbances occurred, but they
were quite often of the seeking of Muslims. In Ludhiana, Jullundur
and Hoshiarpur Muslims stabbed Sikhs and Hindus and there was some counter-stabbing.
But on the whole there was no retaliation in East Punjab. Muslims
in Patiala, Jind, Nabha and Faridkot States, all of which with the exception
of Jind are Sikh majority areas, (Jind being Hindu. Sikh majority)
there was not a single incident of attack on any Muslim. Muslims
felt in these States perfectly secure, though in parts of Patiala Muslims
did try to make mischief against the Sikh refugees from Rawalpindi and
the Frontier. But even at this there was no attack on Muslims anywhere.

In Ferozepur,
Ludhiana and Jullundur districts in which Sikhs were the most powerful
factor in the rural population-there was no incident of attack on any Muslim
anywhere. Nor in rural Lahore, where the Sikhs were better organised
and more powerful than Muslims. The only District in the rural areas
of which (and that after the middle of July) some fighting did occur was
Amritsar. This was the direct and inevitable consequence of the daily
burning and stabbing of Hindus and Sikhs in Amritsar town, and in Lahore.
Sikh villagers coming to Amritsar were quite often waylaid by Muslims outside
the town and murdered. Sikh murders ran into hundreds. These
murders inflamed the Sikh countryside, and attacks on Muslims began to
occur-in July. In Amritsar, Muslims quite often attacked Sikhs in
rural areas also first. Dhapai, Mula Chak, Bhagtanwala, Jhabal, Verka,
Sultanwind, Khasa, etc. were some of the places in which attacks on Sikhs
occurred, That Sikhs should have retaliated by attacking Muslims, who were
in the rural areas not so strongly situated as Sikhs, was only natural.
When the month of August began, Amritsar was the only district in the Punjab
where fighting was going on. Not that Muslims were peaceful.
Only for some strategic reason, as August approached, they appeared to
have decided upon a kind of lull-as if in preparation of some very big
offensive. And that big offensive came everywhere after August 10.
It began in Lahore, and by the 12th and 13th was in operation in Gujranwala,
Sialkot, Gujrat, Montgomery and other near districts. Mianwali, Sheikhupura,
Lyallpur, Muzaffargarh etc. caught up a little later.

In Amritsar
attacks on Muslims began after the 11th August, a day after the terrible
massacre of thousands of Hindus and Sikhs occurred in Lahore. Refugees
came from Lahore-the new wave had already reached East Punjab via Ferozepur
by the 13th August. But their coming did not cause Sikhs anywhere
to flare-up and to attack Muslims. Everyone somehow expected that
Pakistan would have a good responsible Government, and that as soon as
it was established some sort of order would be restored, more successfully
than the British Government had been able to do. This hope, unfortunately,
was soon belied.

The situation
on the 15th August was that all East Punjab was quiet, the only part of
East Punjab where attacks on Muslims had occurred was Amritsar, but Amritsar
was a case apart. This was a city which had spent five and a half
months in a state of siege and here Hindus and Sikhs had suffered terribly
from Muslim aggression. So, punishment of Amritsar Muslims as soon
as the stranglehold of the Muslim Police and officialdom was removed was
only natural. A cornered, persecuted non-Muslim population fell upon
their persecutors and made them flee from Amritsar in the brief space of
a day and a half. But there were absolutely no repercussions of Amritsar
in any part of East Punjab at this time.

Terrible
news continued to pour in from Lahore after the 11th August. It was
a not inaccurate picture of mass murder which flashed to the East Punjab,
through the refugees and other means. East Punjab did not celebrate
Independence Day on August 15 with anything like a heart. Muslim
began, however, to make mischief in East Punjab too. There appears
to have been some kind of a Muslim scheme to create trouble in the nascent
State of India, especially on its Pakistan border. From Jullundur,
Ludhiana, Patiala, Ambala, Delhi, Alwar and other places large Muslim dumps
of arms were unearthed. Near Ludhiana, on the 17th August murders
of Sikhs in trains occurred. That led to murders of Muslims.
Came on this scene stories of fresh atrocities in Lahore, Sialkot, Gujranwala,
etc. and attacks on Muslims by infuriated Sikhs and Hindus. Thus
it was that suddenly on the 21st August train services stopped. With
every report of massacre in West Punjab corresponding things occurred in
East Punjab. It became a race for mass murder of the opposite community.
Exactly the methods which the Muslims had perfected for the genocide of
Hindus and Sikhs, were employed for the destruction of Muslims in East
Punjab. It was arson for arson, murder for murder, abduction for
abduction, forcible conversion for forcible conversion-ad nauseam.

All through
the period since the terrible March riots of Rawalpindi, and the beating
which the Sikhs were daily taking in Amritsar, they had been jeered at
by Muslims and others as cowards. It got abroad that the Sikhs had
lost their old sting; that they had lost the martial spirit which they
had inherited from their fathers. This thesis was so unquestioningly
accepted that certain philosophical people among Hindus and even among
Sikhs began to find historical causes for this supposed deterioration of
the Sikh militant character. Some attributed it to the growing urbanisation
of the Sikhs, others to the decline in the standard of Sikh diet, others
to the growth among them of indifference towards religion, and so on and
so forth. This taunt rankled in the Sikh heart. Sikhs felt
helpless everywhere. In Rawalpindi they were hopelessly out-numbered.
They wanted to be qui& with Muslims in Amritsar. But the overwhelming
Muslim majority in the police, the coordination between the Muslim League
and the officialdom of the Punjab-and what is more-the stationing in East
Punjab of the major portion of the Boundary Force-kept Sikhs totally helpless
spectators of the ruin of Amritsar. Rawalpindi as the months passed,
began to fade a little into history, to become more a problem for rehabilitation
than for revenge. And, it was generally thought that as order would
be established with the birth of Pakistan, the West Punjab evacuees would
be able to return home. This hope somehow continued to grow.
Amritsar remained the one active theatre of war. Lahore was similar.

In summing
up the causes of the occurrence of post-August riots in East Punjab, The
Hindustan Times in its editorial dated October 23, 1948 says:-

“But the
systematic manner in which Pakistan leaders are attempting to paint the
people of this country as demons out to destroy innocent Muslims, while
hiding, it not defending, the horrible outrages perpetrated by members
of their own community from Calcutta to Sheikhupura is nothing but an attempt
to defame this country and throw dust in the eyes of the outside world
regarding the crimes committed by their co-religionists. They also
know, as does everyone in this country, that the Punjab disaster was but
the culminating act of the tragedy which began with the unprincipled campaign
of communal hated and violence which they and their party leaders had been
preaching for years as the only means of securing the ambition of their
heart, namely, the separation of a part of this country where they could
play the role of rulers, even though at the cost of unexampled suffering
and misery to their own co-religionists both in Pakistan and India.”

In an
earlier editorial entitled “Who Was Responsible?” The Hindustan Times
(July 7, 1948) has clearly been able to prove the Pakistan conspiracy and
its aggression which brought on the Punjab Tragedy. Says The Hindustan
Times: Wednesday, July 7, 1948.

“Who was
Responsible?”

“We do
not know why Mr. Ghulam Mohammad1 thought it
his duty to anticipate the verdict of history regarding the responsibility
of Lord Mountbatten for the tragedy of the Punjab. He is reported
to have stated at a Press Conference in London that when the history of
the events of this dark chapter comes to be written ‘a part of the blame-would
rest on Lord Mountbatten.’ He has made two specific charges. The
last British Viceroy was aware of a deep laid conspiracy by the Sikhs and
Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh “to throttle Pakistan by eliminating Muslim”
and refused to take action. The other charge is that Lord Mountbatten
forced partition too quickly. The British Commonwealth Relations
Office has repudiated both charges. It has pointed out that it was
the then Governor of Punjab who had proved himself to be an avowed partisan
of Muslim League, and had looked on impotently while sanguinary riots organized
by the Muslim League and the Muslim National Guards took place in North
Punjab in March and April 1947. It may be convenient for Mr. Ghulam
Mohammed to forget that what happened in August 1947, was a mere continuation
of the bloody chain of reaction which was set in motion by the Muslim League
at Calcutta in August 1946. In March and April 1947, Sikhs had been
brutally massacred and looted and they were abused as cowards because they
had not reacted at once with violence. As a matter of fact Lord Mountbatten
yielded to his pro-Muslim advisers and stationed the major portion of the
Punjab Boundary Force in East Punjab with the result that there was no
force to check or control the terrible massacres of Hindus and Sikhs that
occurred in Sheikhupura and other places. We should certainly like
an impartial investigation into the events of those days and we have no
doubt it will be found that while, on the Indian side, it was the spontaneous
outburst of a people indignant at what they considered the weakness and
the appeasement policy of their leadership, on the Muslim side, the League,
the bureaucracy, the police and the army worked like Hitler’s team with
the tacit if not open approval of those in charge of the Pakistan Government.”

By the
time the Sikh (and Hindu) attack on the Muslims came-the rankling shame
in the Sikh mind at their own helplessness, the pouring into the East Punjab
of train loads of corpses from West Punjab, of daily stories of massacres
and of millions of helpless men, women and children created a revenge-hysteria
among Sikhs and Hindus. That led to these riots in town after town,
village after village and the murders of Muslims on the lines adopted by
the West Punjab planners of Hindu and Sikh genocide.

That Sikh
retaliation would come some day-was apparent to everyone except only to
purblind Muslim Leaguers. Mr. Akhtar Hussain, Chief Secretary to
the Punjab Government for some time before the partition, hinted at this
possibility in his fortnightly review of the situation in the Province,
already quoted. His words will bear a repeating here: (This report
is for the first half of March, 1947) “The prospect is not improved by
the brutality of some of the acts committed by the majority community (Muslims)
in the areas most affected. When details of these facts become known,
as inevitably they will, the danger of retaliation will arise in a degree
fraught with much danger.”

This retaliation
came in the shape of the driving out of Muslims from Amritsar, from August
11, onwards. Sikhs had everywhere else in the East Punjab accepted
the political situation as it was to be on August 15. They were to
strive for a special treatment as minority both in the East and West Punjab.
In the East Punjab they were even speculating on the future political set
up, with the Muslims as a factor in the East Punjab politics always present
in their mind. – So, no thought of driving out the Muslims could have crossed
the Sikh mind.

But there
came the Lahore, Gujranwala and Sialkot massacres and the swelling stream
of refugees. This upset all calculations and political manoevouring.
Only one thought became upermost in the Sikh, and also the Hindu mind-revenge
against Muslims. Sikhs and Hindus of East Punjab- potential rivals
in the political field-were in a day thrown into a situation wherein they
became natural allies in the fight against the Muslims.

II

Let us
examine the Muslim accusation that the Sikhs had a ‘Plan’. A Plan
for what? Pakistan propaganda suggests that it was a plan for creating
a Sikh State in the Punjab. Now, every student of recent Sikh history
is aware that such an objective, if it was present in any clear shape had
been abandoned by the Sikhs in 1945. When the Cabinet Mission came
in 1946, Sikhs did not present a demand for a Sikh State before the Mission.
The idea of the Sikh State had emerged only as a counter-blast to the Muslim
demand of the independent State of Pakistan. The Cabinet Mission
rejected Pakistan, Sikhs naturally did not in that case ask for a separate
Sikh State. All they have been asking for is a re-adjustment of
the Boundaries of the Punjab so as to make the majority domination of Muslims
impossible. Sikhs vigorously protested against the Cabinet Mission
proposals (dated 16th May, 1946), from May 18, 1946 onwards, because these
proposals contemplated not only to retain the old Punjab intact, but
even to tag on to it the still larger Muslim majorities of the North-Western
Frontier Province, Sind, and Baluchistan, with Bhawalpur, Kalat and
other States to be possibly thrown in.

The Cabinet
Mission Scheme failed. Its failure was scaled when it was decided
to create two Constituent Assemblies-one for India and the other for Pakistan.
The British Government Statement of February 20 detailing the process of
transfer of power in India to one Central Government or to several Governments,
was the culmination of the rejection of the Cabinet Mission Scheme.

In all
these developments the Sikhs were naturally hurt and angry. No one
appeared to bother about their future. Then came the Punjab riots
and the decision on June 3rd, 1941 to establish Pakistan. The Sikhs
through S. Baldev Singh, Defence Minister of India, accepted the June 3
plan, which involved the creation of Pakistan. This was done not
because Sikhs did not realize fully what a danger lay to their existence
in being bifurcated between India and Pakistan, but because there was no
other way except division, in the impasse between the Muslim League
and the Congress and secondly because the Congress assured the Sikhs of
full justice. So, Sikhs decided to make the maximum sacrifice which
a people ever had made in the common interest. Sikhs had hoped that
the ‘other factors’ clause of the terms of reference of the Boundary Commission
would be used to operate in favour of bringing the maximum number of Sikhs
into East Punjab as well as the sacred shrine of Nankana Sahib.

That the
Sikhs were bitter and disillusioned at the award of the Boundary Commission
is perfectly true. But the West Punjab Sikhs were willing to remain
in Pakistan as its citizens on the only decent terms on which any people
can brook to become the citizens of a State, namely (a) that all communities
would be treated without any discrimination, and (b) that protection would
be afforded to the Sikh Gurdwaras situated in Pakistan.

But it
was evident that Pakistan was not going to be a Secular State like India.
Leaders of Pakistan were profuse in promises of fair treatment for minorities,
but no one very seriously believed such promises. One school of thought
among Sikhs therefore, thought of the possibility and even necessity of
the transfer into India of some part at least of the Sikh population of
Pakistan. But such a transfer was thought of neither immediately,
nor in any but a peaceful manner, by agreement and determination of compensation.

In all
these political developments there is not an iota of the existence of any
‘plan’ on the part of Sikhs to attack Muslims. As said above, Sikhs
made all their calculations about the East Punjab with the Muslims therein
as an existent. factor. The events which followed August 15 and which
made inevitable total transfer of the non-Muslim and Muslim populations
between West Punjab and East Punjab, were forced upon the Sikhs and the
Hindus by Pakistan Muslims and were not of their own seeking.

The fact
is that Muslims everywhere in Pakistan, had made the life of religious
minorities miserable. How is it that as late as October 25, 1948
so responsible a person as Dr. B. C. Roy, Premier of West Bengal, felt
constrained to say, “It is no use belittling the fact that people are coming
from East Bengal to West Bengal because they find life in East Bengal intolerable.”

Giving
instances of life being made intolerable for Hindus in East Bengal, Dr.
Roy said: -

“My friend
(Finance Minister of Pakistan) states that there has been no case of persecution
or oppression in East Bengal. Will he kindly tell us whether it is
not a fact that house searches had been made in Jessore, Dinapur, Pabna,
Meharpur, Barisal……” (This is followed by a number of charges against the
East Bengal Government).

Persecution
and driving out of the minorities has been the way with the Muslim League.
It began with Noakhali and continued for more than a year as the story
narrated in this booklet has shown.

Pakistan
has made much of several irrelevant or purely imaginary factors in order
to impute a plan of attack on Muslims to the Sikhs. Let us look at
the situation as it was with no fact omitted.

(a) It
is clear that while there was a Muslim aggression, recognised to be such
even by the British Government inasmuch as collective fines are imposed
on Muslims in Rawalpindi, Multan, Lahore, Sargodha and other places prior
to June 1947, no attack of any considerable nature on Muslims in East Punjab
occurred before August 25-about two weeks after mass murder for the second
time had begun in West Punjab. This itself will show what was the
‘plan’ which came first and which dragged the Sikhs into fight.

(b) The
Punjab Chief Secretary’s report estimates (quoted earlier) the strength
of the Muslim League National Guard, at 39,000 for the Punjab. There
was no other such private army (not anyway of this formidable magnitude)
in the Punjab. Leastways had the Sikhs any private army. There
were the members and workers of the Shiromani Akali Dal, but they were
political workers, not a private army. Pakistan has mentioned one
‘Akal Fauj’. No such body actually existed. It existed, if
anywhere, only in the imagination of Pakistan propagandists. The
origin of the concept is that as late as middle of February, 1947 when
the well-known incident (mentioned earlier) of the blackening of the faces
of the non-Muslim tonga drivers occurred in Amritsar, Master Tara Singh
expressed the desire for a Sikh organisation of volunteers to fight against
such aggression on the part of the Muslims. The idea of an Akal Fauj
(Immortal Army) was then let adrift. In some places a few small cells
were created, the total recruitment not coming to more than a few hundreds.
But all along, the Muslim National Guards numbering 39,000 (according to
the Government reports) existed armed and equipped, in liaison with the
police, besides militant Muslim organisations like Khaksars, trained to
attack and murder.

As for
the Shahidi Jatha, a Sikh Volunteer organisation pledged to defend the
panth, that came into existence still later on the 13th of April, 1947
(Baisakhi Day). This was an urgently needed body of volunteers to
defend Sikhs from Muslim aggression everywhere, which was made worse by
the open support given by the police to the Muslims. Sikhs did not
want to commit harakiri, to go under to a total Muslim war upon
them. The Shahidi Jathas put heart into the Sikhs, and did a deal
to keep the East Punjab Muslims, especially of places like Ludhiana and
Jullundur reasonable, in spite of the overwhelming Muslim majority of population
in them.

That the
Sikhs had no notion of an attack on the part of the Muslims and that they
had still less any idea of attacking Muslims is evidenced by two events:
(1) When attacks on Sikhs began on March 5, 1947 in Amritsar a large number
of Sikhs were away to Anandpur to attend Hola Mohalla Fair there-leaving
Amritsar practically defenceless. This they would not have done,
had they expected a fight, must less they had any design to begin one.

(2) In
the Sikh State of Jind right up till August 31, 1947, a Muslim was Prime
Minister. This could not have happened in a Sikh State if Sikhs had
any ‘plan’ to make their States or any part of their homelands a base for
operations against Muslims.

Among
those who have made an impartial study of the Punjab situation is Mr. Ian
Stephens, Editor of the “Statesman”, one of the sanest and most responsible
papers in India. Mr. Stephens brought out some months back a booklet
on the Sikhs, entitled “Among the Sikhs-An Over-blamed people”. The
second half of this title-line “An Over-blamed people” is the true summing
up of the situation of the Sikhs. Never was truer word said in the
midst of so much malicious propaganda, so much maligning and mud-spattering.
The Sikhs have been made the scapegoats for blame not only by Muslims,
but also by ill-informed Hindus and other non-Muslims. The terrible
sufferings of the Sikhs were totally lost sight of, as well as the constant
provocation offered to them, the massacres, loot, arson, destruction of
sacred places, and above all, dishonouring of their women. Only the
excesses committed by Sikhs in retaliation were presented and magnified
manyfold. And hence a totally false and distorted picture was presented
in which the Sikh was presented as the villain of the piece. It even
became fashionable in India to profess sympathy in and out of season for
all kinds of Muslims, and to profess an equal abhorrence for Sikhs.
To correct such a view, let us remember the wise words of Mr. Ian Stephens:-

“Muslims
also wrought frightful barbarities in many places as did Hindus.
Members of all three communities sinned heavily during the unprecedented
slaughterings and maimings and burnings all across upper India between
August ’46 and November, ’47. To hold but one blameworthy is injustice.

“Lopsided and Unchivlrous.

It seems
particularly wrong, lopsided and unchivlrous when the community thus singled
out is that whose personnel, if not renegades from their faith, are necessary
the most noticeable. A true Sikh may atonce be identified from the
Kakars made obligatory by his last Guru.

“Until
members of this numerically small but virile obstinate and deeply religious
community, can (like British Catholics visiting Rome or Lourdes) buy a
ticket for Nanakana Sahib or Panja Sahib confident of the ordinary decencies
of international travel, there will be no stable peace in the two Punjabs,
nor basis for Pakistan to rank herself as the full equal of other countries
in standards of civilized modern tolerance……

“Balance.

Perhaps
however, queried the intellect, this indictment of a single community-the
smallest of the three-was disproportionate, unfair? During the 14
months of unprecedented disorder from August, ‘46, across 1,500 miles of
the Indo-Gangetic plain from Calcutta and Noakhali to Quetta and Kashmir,
members of all three communities had done damnable things. Sikhs
are comparatively few; could they rightly be blamed for so much?

“Inquiry
confirmed the doubt. It elicited, too, the appalling nature of the
Sikhs’ own losses. About 40% of them had been made refugees.
No such figure was approached by the other communities. They had
no strong Press to put their case. The Editorial in The Statesman
during January resulted.”

It is
obvious from the foregoing that while the Muslim League had its ‘plan’
of elimination of minorities, the Sikhs and Hindus retaliated in the face
of the inhuman attacks on their coreligionists. To talk of a ‘plan’
with regard either to the Sikhs or Hindus is fantastic; more probably deliberate
falsehood.